Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees During Fiscal Year 2025

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Patent and Trademark Office</SUBAGY> <CFR>37 CFR Parts 2 and 7</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. PTO-T-2022-0034]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0651-AD65</RIN> <SUBJECT>Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees During Fiscal Year 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> United States Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) sets or adjusts trademark fees, as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), as amended by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success Act of 2018 (SUCCESS Act). The fee adjustments will provide the USPTO sufficient aggregate revenue to recover the aggregate costs of trademark operations in future years (based on assumptions and estimates found in the agency's Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Justification (FY 2025 Budget)), including implementing the USPTO 2022-2026 Strategic Plan (Strategic Plan). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on January 18, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brendan Hourigan, Director, Office of Planning and Budget, at 571-272-8966 or <E T="03">Brendan.Hourigan@uspto.gov;</E> or C. Brett Lockard, Director, Forecasting and Analysis Division, at 571-272-0928 or <E T="03">Christopher.Lockard@uspto.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Introduction</HD> The USPTO publishes this final rule under section 10 of the AIA (section 10), Public Law 112-29, 125 Stat. 284, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ29/PLAW-112publ29.pdf,</E> as amended by the SUCCESS Act, Public Law 115-273, 132 Stat. 4158, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ273/PLAW-115publ273.pdf,</E> which authorizes the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO (Director) to set or adjust by rule any trademark fee established, authorized, or charged under the Trademark Act of 1946 (the Trademark Act), 15 U.S.C. 1051 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> as amended, for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. 35 U.S.C. 41 note. Section 10 prescribes that trademark fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to trademarks, including administrative costs of the agency with respect to such trademark fees. Section 10 authority includes flexibility to set individual fees in a way that furthers key policy factors, while considering the cost of the respective services. Section 10 also establishes certain procedural requirements for setting or adjusting fee regulations, such as public hearings and input from the Trademark Public Advisory Committee (TPAC), a public comment period, and congressional oversight. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Purpose of This Action</HD> Based on a biennial review of fees, costs, and revenues that began in fiscal year (FY) 2021, the USPTO concluded that fee adjustments are necessary to provide the agency with sufficient financial resources to facilitate the effective administration of the U.S. trademark system, including implementing the Strategic Plan, available on the agency website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/StrategicPlan.</E> The individual fees set or adjusted in this rule align with the USPTO's fee structure philosophy, including the agency's four key fee setting policy factors: (1) promote innovation strategies, (2) align fees with the full cost of trademark services, (3) set fees to facilitate the effective administration of the trademark system, and (4) offer application processing options. The fee adjustments will enable the USPTO to accomplish its mission to drive U.S. innovation, inclusive capitalism, and global competitiveness by delivering high-quality and timely trademark examination and review proceedings that produce accurate and reliable trademark rights for domestic and international stakeholders. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Summary of Provisions Impacted by This Action</HD> The USPTO sets or adjusts 28 trademark fees, including the introduction of seven new fees in this rule. The agency is also discontinuing four fees. Under the fee schedule in this rule, the routine fees to obtain and maintain a trademark registration ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> application filings, intent-to-use/use (ITU) filings, and post-registration maintenance fees) will increase relative to the current fee schedule, in order to ensure financial sustainability and provide for improvements needed relative to trademark filings and registration. Additional information describing the fee adjustments is included in Part V: Individual Fee Rationale in this rulemaking and in the “Table of Trademark Fees: Current, Final Trademark Fee Schedule, and Unit Cost” (Table of Trademark Fees), available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> Section 10(a) of the AIA, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ29/PLAW-112publ29.pdf,</E> authorizes the Director to set or adjust by rule any fee established, authorized, or charged under the Trademark Act for any services performed or materials furnished by the agency. Section 10 provides that trademark fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to trademarks, including administrative costs of the agency with respect to such trademark fees. Provided that the fees in the aggregate achieve overall aggregate cost recovery, the Director may set individual fees under section 10 at, below, or above their respective cost. Section 10(e) requires the Director to publish the final fee rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and the USPTO's <E T="03">Official Gazette</E> at least 45 days before the final fees become effective. Section 4 of the SUCCESS Act, available at <E T="03">https://www.congress.gov/115/plaws/publ273/PLAW-115publ273.pdf,</E> amended section 10(i)(2) to provide that the Director's authority to set or adjust any fee under section 10 will end on September 16, 2026. While the fees established by this rule will remain in effect in perpetuity or until adjusted by a future rulemaking, the Director's authority to initiate new rulemakings to set or adjust fees will expire on that date. When adopting fees under section 10 of the AIA, the Director must provide the proposed fees to TPAC, which advises the Director on the management, policies, goals, performance, budget, and user fees of trademark operations, at least 45 days prior to publishing the proposed fees in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . TPAC then has 30 days within which to deliberate, consider, and comment on the proposal, as well as hold a public hearing on the proposed fees. Then, TPAC must publish a written report setting forth in detail the comments, advice, and recommendations of the committee regarding the proposed fees. The USPTO must consider and analyze any comments, advice, or recommendations received from TPAC before setting or adjusting fees. Accordingly, on May 8, 2023, the Director notified TPAC of the USPTO's intent to set and adjust trademark fees and submitted a preliminary trademark fee proposal with supporting materials. The preliminary trademark fee proposal and associated materials are available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> TPAC held a public hearing at the USPTO's headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 5, 2023, and members of the public were given an opportunity to provide oral testimony. Transcripts of the hearing are available for review on the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/TPAC-Fee-Setting-Hearing-Transcript-20230605.pdf.</E> Members of the public were also given an opportunity to submit written comments for TPAC to consider, and these comments are available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/PTO-T-2023-0016.</E> On August 14, 2023, TPAC issued a written report setting forth their comments, advice, and recommendations regarding the preliminary proposed fees. The report is available on the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/TPAC-Report-on-2023-Fee-Proposal.docx.</E> The USPTO considered and analyzed all comments, advice, and recommendations received from the TPAC before publishing the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), “Setting and Adjusting Trademark Fees during Fiscal Year 2025,” in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on March 26, 2024, at 89 FR 20897. The NPRM and associated materials are available on the fee setting section of the USPTO website at <E T="03">https://www.uspto.gov/FeeSettingAndAdjusting.</E> Likewise, before issuing this final rule, the agency considered and analyzed all comments, advice, and recommendations received from the public during the 60-day comment period on the NPRM that closed on May 28, 2024. The agency's response to comments received is available in Part VI: Discussion of Comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Estimating Aggregate Costs and Revenue</HD> Section 10 of the AIA provides that trademark fees may be set or adjusted only to recover the aggregate estimated costs to the USPTO for processing, activities, services, and materials relating to trademarks, including administrative costs with respect to such trademark fees. The following is a description of how the agency estimate ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 211k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━